more on the race of Rameses--the eagle cowers over the serpent of the
Nile. Our masters--no, not mine. My soul, by the power of its wisdom,
controls and chains you, though the fetters are unseen. So long as
craft can master force, so long as religion has a cave from which
oracles can dupe mankind, the wise hold an empire over earth. Even from
your vices Arbaces distills his pleasures--pleasures unprofaned by
vulgar eyes--pleasures vast, wealthy, inexhaustible, of which your
enervate minds, in their unimaginative sensuality, cannot conceive or
dream! Plod on, plod on, fools of ambition and of avarice! your petty
thirst for fasces and quaestorships, and all the mummery of servile
power, provokes my laughter and my scorn. My power can extend wherever
man believes. I ride over the souls that the purple veils. Thebes may
fall, Egypt be a name; the world itself furnishes the subjects of
Arbaces.'

Thus saying, the Egyptian moved slowly on; and, entering the town, his
tall figure towered above the crowded throng of the forum, and swept
towards the small but graceful temple consecrated to Isis.

That edifice was then but of recent erection; the ancient temple had
been thrown down in the earthquake sixteen years before, and the new
building had become as much in vogue with the versatile Pompeians as a
new church or a new preacher may be with us. The oracles of the goddess
at Pompeii were indeed remarkable, not more for the mysterious language
in which they were clothed, than for the credit which was attached to
their mandates and predictions. If they were not dictated by a
divinity, they were framed at least by a profound knowledge of mankind;
they applied themselves exactly to the circumstances of individuals, and
made a notable contrast to the vague and loose generalities of their
rival temples. As Arbaces now arrived at the rails which separated the